Linutop 3: Fanless Mini-PC with Linux

While other mini-desktop manufacturers rely mainly on Intel's Atom CPUs, the Linutop 3 runs on a VIA C7 processor at a 1-GHz rate. The fanless device measures slightly more than 9x9x2 inches and weighs just over 4 pounds. It has 2 GBytes Flash memory and 1 GByte RAM that can be increased to 2 GBytes, and uses a maximum 20 Watts power. The suggested retail price is about $492 at the current rate of exchange.

The Linutop 3 mini-PC in front and rear view, with two USB ports in front and four in back.

The Linutop 3 has six USB ports, a serial interface and audio in and out. Inside is room for a PCIe and two SATAs. The built-in Gigabit Ethernet card supports booting from the net via PXE. The graphics card provides resolutions of up to 1920 x 1080 pixels and has VGA and DVI output.

The device uses its own Xubuntu version Linutop OS that uses the Xfce desktop environment. Firefox, Pidgin, OpenOffice, a PDF viewer and the VLC media player with codecs for Divx, MP3, MPEG-1/2/4 and other formats are pre-installed. An onscreen keyboard is also available. The software package comes in English, German, French, Spanish or Italian. Linutop provides a one-year warranty extensible to three years. Linutop 3 is available through their online shop